Yesterday’s undernourished post ate up eight hours and fifteen minutes of my day. This was fifteen minutes less than the month-to-date average and the same length of time LESS than my daily effort in May. I have been keeping count!

I keep up with current events and it seems that there is so much evil in the world now that the days of maybe billions of us are threatened with psychopath-engineered disasters. I have had my time but feel sad for everyone with, potentially, a long life ahead of them – for whom prospects are becoming increasingly dismal.

I didn’t realise how much work would be involved in looking at the anniversaries of six people every day, but I would like to keep going with it until the end of the year. I’d also like to get out more and enjoy the warmth of, perhaps, our last summer in the northern hemisphere. (I hear a European politician wants to arm Ukraine with nukes. What could possibly go wrong?) So, I’ve reduced my own expectations and re-jigged the workflow to give me a couple of hours a day of fresh air in the next few months.

The daily “grids” will continue but I may only write about one or two of the six people listed. Perhaps you will go to the Shared Tree and add to the lives I don’t have time for.

Robert CAPON lived for only five months or so. His mother has quite a rich Filey heritage on her maternal side but I could find little about the lad’s father and grandfather, both called James. James junior is described as a “seaman/fisherman” in FG&C but is fishing when Robert is baptised. James senior is recorded as a fishing rod maker but his origins are obscure. Elizabeth PEARSON married James Capon at St Oswald’s church in August 1877 and their first child, Thomas was born the following year. Elizabeth heads a household of three on Scarborough Road in 1881. She is described as being married so it can be assumed that her husband was away fishing on census night. Thomas is with her and so is her younger brother Frank, 17, who is also a fisherman. This is the only record I have found of the Capon family and if Kath hadn’t given me a heads up, I would have missed it. The enumerator clearly wrote “Capon” in his book but this has become “Casson” in the Find My Past transcription. I haven’t found a birth record for Thomas and so haven’t added him to the Shared Tree.

Annie Eliza FARLINE and her husband Charles James HALIFAX have not been given their three sons yet on the Shared Tree. Charles, one of ten children born to a miner in the South Yorkshire coalfield, seems to have avoided going down t’ pit by making biscuits. After Annie Eliza’s death, he seems to have returned to his West Yorkshire roots. A Rother Valley death registration in December 1971 fits him quite well.

James CRANE and Elizabeth SHARMAN are Huntingdonshire people but they are grandparents of John James TOMBLIN, who married a Filey woman he met while billeted in the town during the Great War. Their great-grandson Jack was given the middle name “Crane”.

In later life, Joseph WATKINSON of Ilkley was a verger at St Oswald’s. The small obelisk that marks his last resting place is very worn but it also remembers Maria SHEADER, who is from a well-known Scarborough family. They may only have had one child, but Maria witnessed the arrival of eight grandchildren and Joseph four more.

Richard MILLER has a wife on the Shared Tree but neither has forebears, and their only son hasn’t yet been attached to them. The couple was living in Church Street in 1841 and 1851 – so I think the duplicate ID MGCY-R6P gives Mrs Miller the pedigree to which she is entitled. Richard and Elizabeth buried their son in 1846 and died within a few months of each other in 1854.

The Changing Climate

Global warming is a thing, just as common colds and the flu are things. But what is being made of the phenomenon appears to be something else. I have continued weekly visits to Weather Underground to gather temperature data from Durham Tees and ten other stations. With two seasons of the meteorological year completed, I’m going to take some time-outs to produce a few graphs to sprinkle in the blog over the next six months.

For starters –

I would like to know the percentage of Yorkshire coast folk who accept that spring this year was warmer than last. The stand-out is the “polar vortex winter”. I hope never to see another like that one.

Townscape 81 · Belle Vue and John Streets